tips for managing a remote team
tips for managing a remote team
Update: This post is part of our COVID-19 Resource Guide. We are publishing articles and Channel Mastery podcasts during the pandemic with tips, guides, and resources with the goal of helping your brand and business navigate the crisis. Visit our RESOURCE GUIDE>
What you need to know about managing remote teams
At Verde Brand Communications we pride ourselves on enabling our employees to live in places they love. We believe that happy employees are the core to everything we do and being able to live somewhere special is integral to that. Our employees are fortunate to call the towns below their home:
Jackson, WY
Boulder, CO
Seattle, Washington
Durango, CO
Bend, Oregon
Louisville, Kentucky
As such, we’ve dealt with the challenges of managing a remote workforce for many years. It’s always been a core tenet for us to cultivate a tight knit team and yet most might assume that having employees in many different states would be in conflict with that aspiration. Whether it be a cultural shift or a health-focused initiative...more and more firms are dealing with the changes that come with managing a remote workforce.
Here are our tips for how we retain our culture across state borders & varying time zones to deliver the best service possible to our family of clients.
Technology is the Foundation
Technology can make or break a sustainable remote workforce. At a minimum you must ensure that you have reliable services for Video Conferencing, Chat & Collaboration, Screen Sharing, & Self-Service HR Management. The easier it is for employees to engage and leverage these services...the better.
Video conferencing tools such as Zoom, Skype, and Google Hangouts are good places to start. We recommend video calls over conference calls, un-muted, for the smoothest meetings.
Set Expectations
It is essential that leadership sets and enforces core standards for a remote workforce. Key expectations to set standards around include availability, hours, responsiveness, and leveraging video calls whenever possible. These expectations help to set the tone and ensure fairness across employees.
Communication Best Practices
Try to maintain communication best practices that mostly closely mimic the culture that would have existed if your employees were all in an office together. Communicate with employees frequently. Set regular cadences for meetings to ensure team members don’t feel overly distant during the remote transition and beyond.
Trust your Team
Managers must trust their employees as they transition into a remote cadence. One should not manage differently just because someone is working from home. Use communication, transparency, and collaboration tools to ensure managers and employees have the requisite level of visibility into key activities.
Set Boundaries
One of the biggest challenges for remote workers is being able to unplug from their work. Going to an office helps with this predicament and when that separation is no longer a part of the equation some folks can find their hours and mindspace consumed by work to exponentially increase. In the same way you want to set expectations around what people should do...you want to help people not overdo it. Be wary of endless emails and communication after-hours.
We encourage our team to have a set area in the home for work, whether it is a dedicated desk/workstation, to the kitchen table, it is important to have a place to focus. In addition, suggest they dress as if they were in the office, but slightly relaxed, just no pajamas.
Reward Ownership & Proactivity
Excellent remote employees are proactive and take deep ownership of their work products. These employees deliver exceptional results no matter where they are. It is key to take notice of these folks and reward this behavior.
Have Fun
Realize that this can be a benefit to unilaterally improve the lives of your employees. Employees can spend more time with family, pets, and in places they love.
Keep it casual! Use GIFS to express emotions and help to bridge the gaps that surface with a higher prevalence of non-verbal communication.
LASTLy: in current events
Be flexible, understanding, and be able to pivot based on what is going on in the world. With the recent outbreak of the coronavirus, COVID-19, we see many more businesses allowing/requiring employees to work-from-home. If this is the case, adjust and evolve to meet your employees needs and safety. For this, we have put together a response plan and framework for companies dealing with COVID-19.